Jemaah Islamiyah

Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) is a Southeast Asian Islamist terrorist group formed on 1 January 1993 by Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Bashir, two people of mixed Arab and Javanese descent. It established contact with al-Qaeda after the 1998 downfall of Suharto's secular regime, and in 2002 it perpetrated the 2002 Bali bombings, killing 202 people and wounding 209, its most famous attack against tourists. It also carried out terrorist attacks against hotels, primarily in the capital of Jakarta or in the city of Bali, and it grew to a strength of 5,000 fighters. The group had operations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines.